The manipulation of nationalism in Britain and France - Ludwig James

by The Editor

The liberal-left will manipulate the rise of nationalist sentiment in the coming years, just like the hard-left did in the past.

By Ludwig James

The liberal-left will manipulate the rise of nationalist sentiment in the coming years, just like the hard-left did in the past.

Take World War Two. The alleged ‘proletariat’ was exposed once again as nothing more than a cold academic abstraction, when the working class of every European nation had chosen patriotism over Marxist theory, just as they had done in World War One. Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School had already been born to undermine national identities on the cultural front, but they were yet to make their full impact.

Stalin knew that theoretical impositions on the empirical world lack the emotive pull of what has evolved naturally: a sense of nationhood. As Germans stormed across the Russian frontier, Stalin the politician, like Horkheimer the theorist, jettisoned the intellectual fuzz of Marx because it lacked the force of nationalism. He decided to play the patriot. This would be the greatest, but not the only instance, of the hard left’s manipulation of nationalist sentiment in the 20th century. The persecution of the Orthodox Church was suspended. A defence of the motherland disingenuously proclaimed, and the Russians rallied behind the call to defend faith and motherland as though it was 1812 all over again.

In 2012, with Stalin’s children happily entrenched in Brussels, and Horkheimer’s disciples clogging up the university professorships across Europe, it is left to the stupid left, like the Socialist Workers party in Britain, to maintain a traditional Marxist position, in their case a Trotsky-like globalist one. Stupid, not least because they are too dumb to realize their views are already implemented culturally by the government, albeit wedded to crony capitalist economics. SWP Marxists, let’s admit it, usually consist of unpopular students sneering misanthropically from the sidelines at those students they believe to be less evolved than themselves. They remain on the margins hurling abuse, waiting for the day we’re all supposed to become ‘class conscious’ and forget about national loyalties. They are the eternal protesters who have been wrong since 1914 if not 1848; no need to worry about these throwbacks.

The clever and more successful left, particularly in Western Europe, have realized our national loyalties will never wither away as the pseudo-science of historical materialism held. They sought to undermine those loyalties in a culture war and long march through the institutions, as well as by criminalizing them through a surfeit of legislation. This is usually classified as cultural Marxism. They have been successful since the 1960s and now dominate western institutions. But growing numbers, especially amongst the young, are waking up to the truth of cultural Marxist tyranny and its pernicious ideological offshoot called ‘Political correctness’. With the rise of nationalist parties in European elections everywhere from Greece to France, as well as growing extraparliamentary organizations like the English Defence League here in England, Nationalists of all forms must beware of the liberal-left’s attempts to hoodwink us just as Stalin and the hard left once did with Russian soldiers.

One can see this hoodwinking strategy at work even in aborted ideas like the ‘blue labour’ plans of Professor Maurice Glassman. It was a purported attempt to put the party back in touch with the very same patriotic and family values the likes of Tony Blair and Ed Miliband spent decades sneering at. But why should the ordinary patriotic man fool for this? Let us remember, Labour are the party who always went out of their way to claim they were there to protect the ordinary, white, working class man. And yet when in power, they are the party who have absolutely destroyed him with globalization and its concomitant invitation to their doorsteps of all the third world’s immigrants. It took a real, staunch Tory, Enoch Powell, to represent ordinary families on this important issue, not Labour.

This hoodwinking is also evident in my some-times home country across the channel. Throughout the 2012 French election campaign, incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy basically parroted Marine Le Pen of the Front National to hold on to power. If he had won the election though, there’s no reason to believe he would have changed anything, because he didn’t change anything during his previous five year tenure. This is why the discourse of politicians must no longer be trusted. If you have a party like the UMP in France, who have always represented republicanism, globalization and liberal economics, one can be pretty sure that after the campaign lies and election spin, they will continue to support republicanism, globalization and liberal economics. In England, we should be wary of the non-Conservative Party’s attempt to use a similar tactic as the UMP, for it will only siphon off votes from the real UKIP alternative. As for the Labour Party, blue’ or any other colour, they have always have been the destroyers of traditional values and the working class, and they will continue to be so.

The left’s greatest weapon to destroy nationalism is a big state. In France, the gargantuan state even defines what French nationalism is, not the French people. The nation is seen as synonymous with bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy exists to police the people, and manipulate them into supporting Enlightenment universalism. This now happens throughout the European Union, which was founded by the French. Every mainstream French party, including allegedly right wing ones like Le Front National are guilty of this. They hold firm to the French revolutionary dogma and celebrate its terrorism every July the 14th. All candidates railed against the ‘mondialist’ threat to the Republic in this year’s election, but only in a shallow, one-dimensional way.

The people of France are not represented by their mainstream parties. For pragmatic reasons, one would be inclined to vote for Le Front National anyway, but even the seemingly nationalistic causes they identify are not deep enough. They include the pressing issue of serving halal meat (Marine Le Pen). Likewise for the other candidates. German austerity-(Francois Hollande), or ‘Anglo-Saxon finance’, (Jean-Luc Melanchon).

All are Secular. All are Egalitarian. All are republican. All are feminist. The twice-divorcee, pro-abortion, republican, secularist Marine might adopt Joan of Arc as a symbol of the nation, but 90% of her pronouncements are indistinguishable from the communist loud mouth Melanchon. She hijacks Joan of Arc as a national symbol, but I wonder what Jeanne D’Arc would make of Marine? Her biggest fear about the 6 million Muslims in France is that they might not conform to ‘Laicite’ the form of secualarism in France which basically means anti-religion. A true nationalism, a true patriotism even, is not allowed to exist in France because the left-wing state is too big, and the state manufactures what the national identity is, then enforces it on the masses. The right needs to face this fact and look for other avenues. In France, one should probably vote for Monarchist parties when it is not tactically detrimental to do so. In England, UKIP is the only real electoral alternative. But the Right must look for other avenues. In France, that’s Action Francais. In Britain, it’s the Traditional Britain Group. Expect lots of squealing from the mainstream parties in the near future. They will tell us immigration must be capped and that they had reservations about the European Union all along. I for one, will not believe them.

Content on the Traditional Britain Blog and Journal does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Traditional Britain Group

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